Being a hater isn't hard

The worthwhile things in life take effort

Photo by Hisham Zayadneh on Unsplash

Around my junior year of high school, I read an excerpt from a speech that I haven’t been able to forget since.

In fact, it impacted me so deeply that I went on to quote it at my high school graduation the next year. Then, about a year and a half ago, I pulled it out again when I was tasked with writing an address for an Army 3-star to deliver to an audience of teenagers.

The speech is called Citizenship in a Republic, but the excerpt is more commonly known as The Man in the Arena, and it was delivered by former President Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910.

Here’s the excerpt, in all its glory:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I think of these words regularly, though not as regularly as I should. So often, it feels as if I’m fighting against my nature to live up to the standard Roosevelt sets here, to be the “doer of deeds” rather than the person who sits in the stands complaining about how they could have been done better.

It is so easy to be a critic. Hating has become a hobby in our online world, where there are entire forums and Facebook groups dedicated to “snarking” on celebrities and influencers.

Think someone’s engagement ring is ugly? Take a screenshot and post it to a “ring shaming” group.

Dislike someone’s fashion sense, political beliefs, or favorite recipe? Leave a comment telling them how stupid they are.

See someone doing something odd in public? Film and post it so you and millions of your closest friends can laugh at them together.

It makes my stomach turn to see all these hateful actions listed back to back, but even this is the milder end of the disconnected, dehumanising behavior that’s become normalized in online spaces.

Of course, hating wasn’t invented by Reddit users; it’s really just gossip at the end of the day, mean-spirited judgements cloaked with false concern or “justified” frustrations.

In the critic, I see echoes of the Enemy. The word “Satan” literally means “accuser,” and he’s described in the book of Revelation as “accusing [our brothers] day and night before God.” (Rev. 12:10)

Can’t you imagine it? God is sitting on his throne, answering prayers, listening to the concerns of his children, managing the heavenly host, literally holding the universe together. Meanwhile, he’s got this gnat in his ear who won’t shut up about the fact that I got impatient with someone in the grocery store today. It’s kind of sad.

Our Enemy is the Father of Lies and the King of the Haters; it’s literally all he knows to do. To play his game is to give in to the spirit of destruction and chaos, to tear down images of God instead of giving them the love, dignity, and respect they deserve. It is easy, but it is the way of death.

Thank goodness there’s another way.

From the beginning, God’s people are commanded to “be strong and very courageous.” (Joshua 1:7)

The mission of the Israelites—to clear the Promised Land of wicked peoples, to resist the temptation to bow to their gods and take on their idols—is not an easy one. Its success is dependent upon complete and total reliance on and faithfulness to God, belief that he’ll deliver them from the hands of their enemies and make good on the promises established generations before.

There are plenty of critics even in this chosen group, but God’s command and standard remains consistent.

In the gospels, we see Jesus come face to face with the Accuser himself as he spends 40 days in the desert fasting. He pokes and prods, trying to bring Jesus down to his level: “Why don’t you do it the easy way?”

But Jesus resists.

The remainder of the New Testament tells the story of God’s people “spending themselves in a worthy cause,” taking on the task of spreading the news of Christ to the ends of the earth.

The mission doesn’t go perfectly; there are shipwrecks and interpersonal conflicts and imprisonments and martyrdoms.

Yet, the author of Hebrews can say with confidence that “we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” Heb. 10:39

I wrote several weeks ago about how Christianity is hard. There’s always work to be done—in the world, in my community, in my own heart. But we’re not working from a place of insecurity; not spending our days trying to please a critic whose only job is to remind us how imperfect our efforts are.

We know “great enthusiasms, the great devotions;” Christianity itself is an invitation into the greatest devotion one could dream of. We attempt to “be ye perfect,” and we fall short—but, by the grace of God, with the help of the Holy Spirit, following the example of Christ, we stand back up and keep pressing on toward the goal anyway.

We are not strong in our own power, but through our utter submission to and dependence on God.

We do not take the easy way out. We trust in the guarantor of our salvation, even when he seems far from us. We recognize his image in every individual we meet, whether across the aisle at Publix or on the other side of an LED screen.

We do not dwell on the words of the critic, because our minds are filled instead with the word of God.

We rest in the completed work of Christ.

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